Jerrie Cobb, an aviation pioneer and advocate for women in space, has died

Geraldyn “Jerrie” M. Cobb died Thursday at the age of 88.
[credit: Cobb family collection ]

Geraldyn “Jerrie” M. Cobb, a noted aviation pioneer and
fierce advocate for women flying into space, died Thursday at her
home in Florida, her family has said. She was 88.

Cobb is perhaps most well known for her participation in what
became known as the “Mercury 13,” a group of 13 women who passed
preliminary screening processes in 1960 and 1961 to determine their
suitability as astronauts under the guidance of Dr. Randolph
Lovelace. Cobb scored in the top 2 percent of all who had taken the
battery of tests for candidates previously, including both women
and men.

However, the privately funded effort was not officially
sanctioned by NASA. A
Netflix documentary about the experience, released in 2018,
offered a clear verdict for why women were excluded from NASA in
the space agency’s early days—”good old-fashioned prejudice,” as
one of the participants said.